THERE is a common cry from most everyone at this time of year, “There’s nothing on!” The sad thing is there is some truth to it.

In the absence of much else to watch you could do worse than Marvel’s Agent Carter (Fox, Sunday)

The best drama, the best comedies, even factual series are rarely thrown away at this time of year when, according to many TV execs, we’re either on holidays, or near a barbecue, or both. All we have to look forward to now is The X Factor. A nation sighs.

So it was in frustration that on Tuesday night I raided catch-up on ITV Encore where I found Brideshead Revisited. It was still truly wonderful. It was episode 11, the final 90-minute offering broadcast in December 1981, as doddery Lord Marchmain (Laurence Olivier) returns to the family seat to die. “Put the queen-size bed in the Chinese drawing room, please,” he oozed.

The scale of the series was epic, in every sense, and parts of it were shot like a film, with long tracking shots in this episode of Jeremy Irons and Diana Quick walking through the woods discussing the “lack of entail”. Oh yes, another one of those to excite Downton Abbey fans everywhere.

You couldn’t accuse it of rushing a story either. Here was Evelyn Waugh’s evocative classic told in its entirety by John Mortimer. No messing, no reimagining, no updating, just how the original writer would have imagined it on the screen.

My message to drama commissioners now is to watch Brideshead to see where they have gone wrong for the past 34 years. Don’t give us another reheated version of Dickens, or Tolstoy (we’re to get War And Peace soon on the BBC); just do it straight and you will be rewarded with millions of viewers. But maybe don’t put it out over a barbecue summer.

In the absence of much else to watch you could do worse than Marvel’s Agent Carter (Fox, Sunday), starring sultry British actress Hayley Atwell (Any Human Heart). It may have “Marvel” in the title, but don’t expect Captain America to jump out of the screen.

OK, he does appear but spends most of his time trying to land a very expensive-looking plane into the sea while Peggy Carter pines away looking distraught. You can fill in the rest.

While the story is a spin-off from the Captain America comic strip and films, it is refreshingly “uncartoony”. Peggy Carter works for a spy agency in post-war America. Dominic Cooper plays businessman Howard Stark (Iron Man Tony’s father), while James D’Arcy is Peggy’s sidekick. You could say that Fox has done rather well with the British casting. Will the last actor to leave Britain please switch off the lights?

In this first episode, which of course was preposterous but not so much to make it unwatchable, Carter was tracking down a chemical weapon which she managed to neutralise with what appeared to be vinegar and brown paper. But, in doing so, her nice but oblivious flatmate was shot straight between the eyes by an uncaring baddie.

Bearing all this in mind, the drama was sassy, sexy and stylish, notwithstanding a large nod to Mad Men. The dialogue varies in quality, so you have to excuse characters saying gravelly nonsense like, “I owe you one, pal”. Carter also has a very useful weapon herself. It’s lipstick marked, “Sweet Dreams”, which has a strikingly soporific effect on anyone she kisses.

PH

Toby Stephens stars in Black Sails (History, Tuesday)

America has plucked another of our fine actors in the shape of Toby Stephens. He stars in Black Sails (History, Tuesday), which is Game Of Thrones meets Pirates Of The Caribbean. The first episode of the second series is now on “real” television, the first season having gone out online on Amazon.

It’s billed as having some basis in “historical fact”, and I do congratulate it for resisting the urge to cast any zombies in the drama. Are they rising from the deep in the second series?

What it does have, in the style of Thrones, is acres of flesh on show in the 18th century drinking dens of the Caribbean. At least we now know where and when topless bars came into being. Before you get overly excited, it does have a plot. Stephens is a pirate captain who is on the trail of huge Spanish treasure.

Unfortunately, a page is missing from a crucial schedule, which must surely feature the large letter “X”. But essentially this is pirate drama quite unlike any other. As one of the more willing ladies says to a conquest: “You’re so full of surprises.” And so now is the History channel, the new home for teenage boys with time on their hands.

As surprising as it sounds, Joanna Lumley may well be the next Michael Palin. And it’s no bad thing. Joanna Lumley’s Trans-Siberian Adventure (ITV, Sunday) was one of the most inspiring travel shows in years.

This type of documentary has been hijacked in recent times, but Patsy’s train journey through China was thoroughly fascinating. I can imagine many people reacting in the same way: “I want to go to China, too.” Lumley was mostly goggle-eyed, not only on the Great Wall but as she was driven through the streets of Beijing by a real estate financier in his Roller. “It is a sleeping giant no more,” Patsy told us. Judging by her evidence, she’s absolutely right.

China must be completely civilized now, because not only are they buying a large share of the smart phones in the world, but they’re also taking more selfies than anybody else. So the only thing you need to avoid on your first trip to China is the dreaded selfie stick.

STEPHENSON’S ROCKET

I have nothing against hairdressers. They’ve given us some of the best double entendres around. These were in ample supply in the uninspiringly named Hair (BBC2). It was actually the Great British Hair Off, if it was anything. We had amateur snippers competing for the right, in reality show terms, to be “hair today, gone tomorrow”.

The best moment was when someone combined basket weaving techniques with hair styling, surely robbing us of the next format: Great British Basket Cases, hopefully coming soon to BBC Two.